I cant put the graphical value of the red value in the image as i can only out 1 image.
But on the graph, the red sma s 1.11878 instead of the 1.1205922 in the output journal.
Code:
Print("Blue 6MA is " + DoubleToString(iMA(NULL,shorttf,6,0,MODE_SMA,PRICE_TYPICAL,1)));
Print("Red 6MA is " + DoubleToString(iMA(NULL,shorttf,6,1,MODE_SMA,PRICE_TYPICAL,1)));
Hi,
I don’t understand the difference between the ,6,1, and the 6,0 in the code (I am not familiar with the syntax of the code used) but I do know it is important to understand exactly what is meant by SMA and MA. I assume a 6MA is the average of the last six moving average values, but how is that moving average defined? Is it the same as the last six SMA averages (simple moving average) or is MA calculated differently than SMA? Is each contributor to the six moving averages based on O, H, L, C or other parameter? Food for thought. PS. I have been creating and analysing graphs from tabular data since 1978
Good luck with it. And more importantly, does it matter to your overall objective?
Thanks for your reply and your input regarding the MA!
Sorry for not mentioning it earlier, I am using mq4. So the difference is that the red MA has a shift of 1 applied to it. https://docs.mql4.com/indicators/ima
This version of the MA takes the simple average of the (H+L+C)/3 of the last 6 candles. What i am trying to do is automate an EA which places an order when price breaks the MA and the MAs have a crossover.
Based on that, i am confused as to why the graphical value of the MA and the output on the journal is different when going through to see if there is anything wrong with the logic in the code.
Now i realise i can manually calculate the MA to see which value is correct.
Thanks for helping me to realise this I now know how to move forward with the code.
Hi Mangoman,
Glad if I was some help here. Note that the more candles you use in the MA (eg the 100SMA) the further the average curve moves to the right. Which means that most of the price action has already happened before the indicator tells you it has. Doing anything else with the data (eg applying a shift of 1) is cosmetic, but in another way it is making the data fit more closely to the actual candle performance. This can be misleading at the least, and devastating at the most if applied to EA programs. For this example reason and many others, I have bad feelings about the efficacy of EA programs, especially those written by people who don’t understand the fundamental underlying datasets and how their manipulation with equations can have unintended consequences. Good luck with it. It was a lot simpler when you had those white cards that you had to punch holes in to run a computer program. LOL.
May i know if you do your analysis based more on TA or FA?
Have you tried writing EAs based on pure TA?
What are your thoughts on such EAs that rely purely on TA?
Hi Mangoman,
Right now I am in transition in our investment lives, and so it has impacted our trading lives too. We are moving from very active to more passive - we are gettting too old to burn the candle.
I don’t feel I can give any advice on this matter that would be of use to other forum members. I have never written any EAs, but it has occurred to me that some time in the future when I am less busy with other pursuits, the idea interests me. Last year I managed the initial transformation of a service in industry that started to use robotic process automation for some of the simpler, previously manual tasks. As simple as those cases seemed, the automation results did not always perform as expected. Humans seem to cope with machine unpredictability (like outages) far more eloquently than robots.
At this time, I think it would be naive of me to put real money into an EA system (unless I had written it myself) because I have no real life examples of a perfectly working system. That is not to say I ignore EAs.
The MA is calculated differently from the SMA but you will have to confirm this with an expert. Everything else seems fine to me and you shouldn’t really worry about it so much. All the best for your future trades, keep learning.
